I-Corps: Digital Solution for Preventing Interpersonal Violence

The broader/commercial impact of this I-Corps project is the development of a digital solution that would address a long-standing societal problem of Inter-Personal Violence (IPV) that primarily affects women and girls worldwide. Social science research has proven that millions of people do not report and suffer in silence because of the normalizations of violence instilled by the “patriarchal system.” Empowering people, especially women, girls, and sexual minorities to take proactive measures in breaking their silence in ending violence is the primary goal of this digital intervention.

The proposed digital technology provides a proactive capability that may have wide cost-saving public benefits as well as commercial prospects in providing rapid IPV prevention solutions to organizations such as the government (especially criminal justice agencies), women’s and faith-based organizations, educational institutions (college and universities), and corporations (companies promoting diversity and resilience). Successful commercialization of such a product would bring this one-stop awareness and empowerment digital platform to the market with the potential to make significant impact on IPV prevention.

The technology could improve the lives of millions of women from varied socio-economic strata, delivering tangible economic benefits to communities and corporations across the U.S.

This I-Corps project is based on the development of a digital tool that involves unique integration of social science principles in criminal justice and cognitive science with state-of-the-art software engineering technology, data science, and computer science. Prior research suggests that a digital technology-based web application may overcome major challenges in digital privacy, safety, accessibility under low resources environments, and usability in dealing with Inter-Personal Violence (IPV).

IPV is a sensitive, personal issue, and its varied ecosystems and archetypes posit unique challenges. The proposed technology is a software product grounded in social science research using mathematical algorithms (e.g., based on data mining, machine learning, and artificial intelligence) at its core. The focus is on proactively empowering people to understand their personal circumstances from social science research-based evaluations and then providing them with resources to prevent IPV or to better manage an ongoing situation.

The product is envisioned as a digital modular platform that would be designed to be usable on all mobile phones and laptops, and bandwidth limited cellular environments. The data analytics built into the software and integrated with artificial intelligence will provide instant feedback to users to help them make informed decisions.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.